Then for days the Violet was hurled at full acceleration toward the center of the Galaxy. Long before the Green System was reached, however, the globular cruiser was swung off her course and, mad acceleration reversed, was put into a great circle, so that she would approach her destination from the direction of our own solar system. Slower and slower she drove onward, the bright green star about which she was circling resolving itself first into a group of bright-green points and finally into widely spaced, tiny green suns.
Although facing the completely unknown and about to do battle, with their wits certainly, and with their every weapon possibly, against overwhelming odds, neither man showed or felt either nervousness or disorganization. Loring was a fatalist. It was DuQuesne's party; he was merely the hired help. He would do his best when the time came to do something; until that time came there was nothing to worry about.
DuQuesne, on the other hand, was the repose of conscious power. He had laid his plans as best he could with the information then at hand. If conditions changed he would change those plans; otherwise he would drive through with them ruthlessly, as was his wont. In the meantime he awaited he knew not what, poised, cool, and confident.
Since both men were really expecting the unexpected, neither betrayed surprise when something that was apparently a man materialized before them in the air of the control room. His skin was green, as was that of all the inhabitants of the Green System. He was tall and well-proportioned, according to Earthly standards, except for his head, which was overlarge and particularly massive above the eyes and backward from the ears. He was evidently of advanced years, for his face was seamed and wrinkled, and both his long, heavy hair and his yard-long, square-cut beard were a snowy white, only faintly tinged with green.
The Norlaminian projection thickened instantly, with none of the oscillation and "hunting" which had been so noticeable in the one which had visited Skylark Two a few months earlier, for at that comparatively short range the fifth-order keyboard handling it could hold a point, however moving, as accurately as a Terrestrial photographic telescope holds a star. And in the moment of materialization of his projection the aged Norlaminian spoke.
"I welcome you to Norlamin, Terrestrials," spoke the projection. "I suppose that you are close friends of Seaton and Crane, and that you come to learn why they have not communicated with you?"
"I welcome you to Norlamin, Terrestrials," he greeted the two marauders with the untroubled serenity and calm courtesy of his race. "Since you are quite evidently of the same racial stock as our very good friends the doctors Seaton and Crane, and since you are traveling in a ship built by the Osnomians, I assume that you speak and understand the English language which I am employing. I suppose that you are close friends of Seaton and Crane and that you have come to learn why they have not communicated with you of late?"